Abstract

On 13 February 2013, the President of the United States, the President of the European Commission and the President of the European Council jointly announced that the EU and the US had agreed to launch negotiations on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). According to the final report of the High Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth (HLWG), the TTIP will aim at the:

- elimination or reduction of conventional barriers to trade in goods, such as tariffs and tariff-rate quotas

- elimination, reduction, or prevention of barriers to trade in goods, services, and investment

- enhanced compatibility of regulations and standardselimination, reduction, or prevention of unnecessary “behind the border” NTBs to trade in all categories

- enhanced cooperation for the development of rules and principles on global issues of common concern and also for the achievement of shared global economic goals

This paper evaluates some of the potential effects of EU-US TTIP economic integration on the trade in goods of 43 low-income countries (LIC). It first assesses the impact of removing the most-favoured nation (MFN) tariffs that apply to trade between the EU and the US. It then examines the impact of regulatory integration on sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures and technical barriers to trade (TBT) on LIC.